For its Belgian premiere, Bozar hosted the screening of the film “Should the Wind Drop” by Nora Martirosyan on September 25, in Brussels, in the presence of its director and main actor Grégoire Colin, as well as of its French and Belgian producers Julie Paratian (Sister Productions) and Annabella Nezri (Kwassa Films). Organized in partnership with AGBU Europe, the French Embassy in Brussels, Unifrance and Sooner, the event gathered more than a hundred spectators in Covid-safe conditions.

The film is a parable on the impossible take off of a country, Artsakh. It tells the story of a French auditor visiting Stepanakert to examine its airport and determinate whether it can finally open to allow flights to fly and connect the country to the rest of the world. With its staff, its director and its air control tower, the airport is a microcosm of the Republic of Artsakh: a country fully operational (with its institutions, ministries, schools, hospitals, etc.) but that is not recognized as such. The film shows in a powerful and poetic way what it means for its inhabitants, young and old, to live in a country that doesn’t exist.

During the Q&A session that followed the screening, the filmmaker described the long journey that she went through to make the film, from its scriptwriting phase to its actual completion in 2020, noting that “the existence of the film in itself is a sort of miracle”. Indeed, shot in Artsakh in 2018, the first screening of the film took place on the eve of the 2020 war. No sooner was the film born that already it was turning into an archive.

Shot in locations which are now in part emptied of their inhabitants, “watching the film today is indeed like watching a world that has disappeared”, noted Grégoire Colin with sorrow, also revealing how the film shoot in Artsakh and his encounters with local people profoundly impressed him.

If the brutal disruption caused by the 2020 war in Artsakh revealed the painful reality facing the region, even more distant today from a sustainable peace and from an international recognition, people still need more than ever to believe in the possibility of a better life. A life not conditioned by borders, barriers or constraints, but a life reinvented where pursuing our dreams is still possible. The little boy in the film, characterized by his creativity and perseverance, understood it better than anyone else.

Shortly after the premiere in Brussels, Should the Wind Drop was selected to represent Armenia at the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language film section.